Turning of the Sky
by Kagetaka
Summary: In a world where Vinsmoke Sora is less than optimistic about the re-humanizing of her quadruplets, Sanji grows up as the genius third prince of Germa Kingdom.


**Turning of the Sky**

It went the only way things could have gone.

Vinsmoke Sora was a woman who lived as sure as the sun rose and slept, and there never was, and never would exist a world where she would acquiesce to the genome project her husband wished to subject herself and her children to.

That much was set in stone, permanently etched into the annals of the world.

How she chose to fight the decision, though, was a fluid and temporal thing.

Amidst hopeful times, she would flee the kingdom with her unborn children with only the assistance of her firstborn child Reiju. Amongst times where war reigned upon the seas, she would remain in Germa and die standing her ground in every attempt to reverse the changes hoisted upon her unborn babes.

When it came to her children, Sora's journeys and ends could only revolve around their well being from the moment they'd been conceived. Two paths with many roots branching out into the world.

And so it went: that in a time of strife, Sora carefully considered the concoction she was to take to try and reverse what had been done to her children. For them to grow up _human_ was her one true wish, but if she were to fail and her children be monsters, then they needed to be armed with more than just the physical enhancements her husband had planned. They would need the weapon only she saw worthy, the very same genius that had once drawn Judge to her.

Vinsmoke Judge was another matter altogether. At youth, he'd believed that the power of science was the secret to ending the world's suffering. Germa was a scientific kingdom made exceptional by their deep devotion to inventions and modifications, and he had been born its heir. In adulthood, he knew now that suffering was not the consequence of misfortune, but a collective choice made by long suffering fools who lacked the will to climb out of their personal hells.

And suffer, had Germa Kingdom, under his father's and his father before him's rules. For once, they'd spanned all the Northern seas, and the very mention of the name had driven their foes to senseless fear and flight. Suffering, then, was certainly this fate of ruling the once empire reduced to seafaring kingdom.

Just as Sora was the unfailing path of the sun, Judge was the constant moon, both full, shadowed, and everything in between. On the best of days he was a doting lover and brilliant mind. On the worst of days, he was a scientist possessed, with only the starkest of end results in mind.

In a world on the cusp of the turn of an era, where only swift and undivided warfare would seize the day, Judge would seek a piece of that sun for himself, having long since lost Sora. In a myriad of grief and ambition, he would have long ago abandoned the last token Sora had gifted him to the open seas, decrying the third boy as a failure and a stain upon his honor as a scientist. It wouldn't help that in that very same world, Sora had only considered as far as humanizing her sons, instead of arming them anew. In that world, the third son had been born entirely ordinary in a world of men playing gods and beasts.

But in a world where Germa's situation was only a little more dire, the seas rougher, even a King could not discard a single card dealt to him.

Not even the fated third child.

"To be blunt… we believe none of the enhancements were successfully applied to… Prince Sanji."

"Not a single one?" Judge drawls out, drinking in the man's flinch. Each of his children had their own personal physician documenting their progress as well as how they were taking to their genetically engineered superiority, and it was clear between the two of them that if one child in particular was _lacking_ in those particular traits to be monitored for, then what use was it to keep the corresponding physician in his employ?

"B-but! The b-boy- no, Prince Sanji! Prince Sanji continues to excel far beyond his siblings in their lessons, he possesses incredible memory, and his ability to draw decisive conclusions from the information he's given on all topics is unheard of-! He is already comprehending mathematics at a college level!"

It's _not_ what he ordered, and for the first five years, he feels as if Sora had betrayed him at the very end. Germa needed its five commanders, and now he only has four to work with and one dud. A dud who apparently has talents elsewhere.

Still, Sora's dying words echo, and he does not discard the useless one. He'll put him to work elsewhere, and maybe, _just maybe_ , something of worth will arise.

The boy, his child- _their child_ \- does not disappoint him. Where the other four lead their armies and bring unholy judgement upon their foes, Sanji steps up to where Sora had left her void.

Their relationship, Judge mused, had been slow to grow. He had gone into Sora's second pregnancy with the intention of creating the perfect legacy that would inherit his Kingdom- children of war and blood who would aid him in reclaiming their lost greatness. Germa Kingdom was a realm claiming mastery of war and science. Judge, for all of his brilliant mind, had been the heir to the warrior branch, and Sora his counterpart to the science branch. Before Sanji himself, Judge had believed he would have no need of an heir to the other branch after Sora.

But the other four, while by no means fools, were hardly worthy heirs to his practice. In the battle of nature versus nurture, he had given them the blueprints to being great of mind and body. Such was their nature. And then he had gone and ordered it all ruined himself!

Judge laughs at the irony of it all- for the dream of forging his perfect children, his perfect weapons, he'd instilled in them the same impatience he'd only gained in his later life. Ichiji, pick up a book? Never. Niji, shadowing him in the labs? An impossibility. Yonji, assisting him in designing a new weapon? A dream. Of the four, only Reiju showed any aptitude towards the sciences, and for a brief period of time, he'd misled himself into believing she was all that he needed, and Sanji had no place in their great family.

It's is Sora's dying words that stayed his hand.

" _I have given you everything now. You have your soldiers to inherit your battle. And you have our son, to inherit my piece."_

His soldiers and his son. He'd scoffed, for a failure could never be his son, and his soldiers were certainly his children. Even on her deathbed she was determined to spite him with her words.

" _And when you realize… the folly you've committed… look to him. He is my son. He will be our family's sun."_

As Sanji fell further and further behind the others in their physical regimen, he cursed Sora's interference. As the four fell further and further behind in their academics in light of Sanji's scores, he suddenly understood Sora's genius and the shrewdness he'd once believed she'd come to lose around the time of her second pregnancy.

They were man and wife for certain. Never, should he have doubted the lasting brilliance of his radiant wife. She had never _removed_ the enhancements, she'd sought to equalize them. The process that had once targeted the physical body had all at once been simultaneously rerouted to Sanji's _brain_.

"Do not harass your brother. He is meant to serve in a different capacity to the rest of you." Judge ordered, in a show of calculation, as his four soldiers stand over the shivering lump that is his third son. Sora's child.

Despite the newfound promise, he resolves himself to impart _some_ form of dignity upon Sanji. Not having a genetically enhanced body did not mean weakness was tolerated.

"B-but." Yonji is the first to speak out, and it is more a credit to his foolhardiness than his bravery.

"No buts. My orders are absolute. All of you are my precious children, and each of you have a place in bringing our kingdom to its glory once more. Do you presume, that I have made a mistake with Sanji here?"

"No way!" Ichiji and Niji shout in unison- good, perhaps they can be taught some form of wisdom from all of this.

"Yes father." Reiju responds quietly, her smile slightly more real than before. That one, he has to watch for, more of her mother than anything else in her.

When Sanji is 10, he is delegated head of the Genome Department, and placed in charge of his sibling's maintenance.

"And how quickly does the exoskeleton reform?" He asks, scribbling down the last answer on a notepad.

"Three hours." Yonji huffs, glaring suspiciously at his older brother. "That's faster than before, by the way."

"Too slow." Sanji snaps right back in response. "How the hell are you gonna get back to fighting if your exoskeleton's dented- say, your shoulders? Elbows? Knees?"

"Well that's your fucking job to figure something out, ain't it?"

"It wouldn't be if that shitty geezer had actually thought things through! Bullet-proofing someone by giving them an exoskeleton and then not giving them self-regeneration from _dents_ is so half-assed, I can't even believe he went through with it." In mid-rant, Sanji yanks the lever hard and the robotic arm that has Yonji's conspicuously dented forehead in its grasp gives a harsh tug, causing the structure to pop back out with a snap.

"Ow, you shitty fuck!"

"Shut up, shitty bro. Take better care of yourself next time."

But when the sun rises on the next week, each of the Germa Army commanders find the new enhancements to their raid suits designed to forcibly conform any hardened surface beneath the suit back into proper form.

Despite the four's cavalier attitude towards their own well-being, Sanji's enhancements find constant use in battle anyways.

Visits to the robot arm of un-denting drop to only head injuries after that. Sanji curses his siblings for being fashion divas and wanting their hair flaunted. He takes particular pleasure when he does get to run the arm though, just to prove his point.

Except when Reiju comes to visit. _She's_ nice, at least. Although he remembers a time when she was not so nice, but not terribly mean either. She was just… there. Watching. Laughing. Nothing else.

There's a grudging tolerance between the five of them. Ichiji is de-facto leader of the group, the firstborn 'heir' whose arrogance knows little bounds. Reiju is an outlier, the only one older who is content to guide their actions from afar. Niji is constantly striving to best Ichiji, and where Ichiji is arrogant, Niji is hardworking. Yonji is the most expressive out of the three successful princes, and the least combat-worthy, although it still ranked him higher than most fully grown adult adversaries. And Sanji is a genius wimp, as the other three boys like to constantly remind him, but they do little else to bruise him these days.

At least, since the day Sanji had purposely knocked Ichiji's ankles, knees, elbows and wrists in with a high-impact drill and left him crippled for the day in a closet until their maid had found him bound and gagged. He'd planned for this for _weeks_ , laying out this ambush.

Niji and Yonji eventually turned up on Sanji's doorstep with their first brother in tow.

"Payback. I'll do you guys too when you least expect it if you don't _fuck off_." Sanji had warned him with a dark look in his eyes, raising the same drill again in his hands.

Ichiji, and his backup crew, Niji and Yonji, regarded him with bemused silence, until Ichiji finally broke the tension with a chuckle. "The crybaby finally grew some fangs. _Nice_. I guess you can be _my_ brother after all."

And then his other two brothers broke out into smiles and somehow Sanji was roped into fixing Ichiji up and everything was strangely _fine_.

"Those dummies only understand one language." Reiju snorts one evening as he recounts this tale to her. "Violence. You might be different from us, but you finally spoke their language, and successfully at that. They respect that."

"Barbaric." Sanji drolls, even as he jots down another note into Ichiji's file.

"Father engineered us this way." Reiju shrugs, reclined on a daybed in Sanji's office. "Except you. Mother engineered you."

"Kind of." He's looked into the drugs Sora had ingested before their births. She hadn't so much engineered him so much as repurposed him in the case her concoction _had_ taken effect and removed his physical enhancements. He's not sure if it's a good thing or not yet, but from his few memories of his mother, at least she'd provided him with a weapon in lieu of his lack of enhancements.

"I think she did a better job." His older sister smiles at him, it's something bitter and sweet at the same time.

"Dunno about that." It's been a real pain in the ass being looked at as a runt for the first five years of life before they'd realized _where_ his enhancements had gone to. "She wanted us to be human. Not war machines. I still am, just in a different capacity."

Reiju hums. "We're the heavy artillery. You're the combat engineer."

It's sad for his mother's plans, but that's just the way things are. They are Germa Kingdom, and science, evolution, and war walk hand in hand. She might have pulled his cog out of the great machine, but then she'd just turned around and plugged him in elsewhere.

What had the point of that been?

"Take good care of us, okay?" When had she moved next to him?! Reiju laughs softly into his ear at his startled expression and presses a small kiss to his cheek before flouncing out of the room.

Sanji's left staring deadpan at the swinging door. "What was that all about…?"

Judge- father- does not neglect him. When he oversees his other sibling's combat training in the yard, Sanji is also dragged out hissing and biting into the sunlight where he's made to try the same courses as his inhuman siblings.

"I don't expect you to come _anywhere_ close to their scores." Judge scowls down at him, and Sanji full heartedly returns the favor. "Just as they do not come anywhere near in your other pursuits. But you will learn to stand on my level _at least_ by the time you are an adult."

Sanji thinks over this proclamation, and finds it logical enough. Judge also lacks any enhancements from birth, and yet he's still wily, experienced, and weathered enough to face down all four of his enhanced children at once at this stage. The raid suit is a great help.

He finds ways to give himself all sorts of edges in this training with his raid suit. If he lacks the strength naturally, he'll augment his tools to bridge those gaps. Judge is bemused and unamused at the same time at Sanji's application of his natural talent to overcoming his obstacle courses.

It's a talent he'll encourage for sure, but in present time...

"That is not the point of this exercise." He puts his foot down when Sanji proceeds to rocket-launch himself up a rock climbing wall. "You cannot substitute conditioning with machinery." Then, as if to prove a point, Judge grabs a rock and within seconds, he's standing at the pinnacle with Sanji, glaring down at his errant son without a hair out of place. "Do it properly Sanji."

"Yes, father…" Sanji grumbles, leaping down and letting his raid suit take the fall for him. From the bottom it is…

He's not like his siblings, who can tuck away thousands of calories in a day without consequence, Sanji realizes soon enough. His new daily regimen now includes three square meals he preps himself, meticulously catered to maximizing his tasks and growth from day to day.

He spends another week observing his siblings' eating habits before he speaks out. "Reiju, let me cook for you." He says boldly, over the snickering of his three brothers. He shoots them another dark look, waving the chef's knife in his hand around for emphasis.

"Will you take me out to a movie afterwards?" His sister asks coyly, flashing him an amused smile.

"No. Give me a month of your meals."

She agrees despite the decidedly uncute way Sanji's asked. The next month or so between them mostly consists of strictly regulated foods, but by the end of the month, Reiju is suddenly consistently stomping Ichiji into the ground, where their scores had been even before.

"Stop chugging so much chocolate." Sanji snaps as Ichiji does exactly that seconds after he makes his request. "For starters."

"Bwut I wike-" His eldest brother proclaims through a full mouth, spitting the sugary confectionery everywhere.

"Fine, get your ass beat then." Sanji makes to close the door but Ichiji sticks his feet in between like a metal doorstop. "What. I don't help people who don't help themselves first."

Ichiji swallows and wipes the rest of the residue off his face. "Okay fine. You just need a month, right?"

"It'd be better if you could stick to it…" Sanji trails off meaningfully, but the shit-eating grin his brother flashes him leaves a message loud and clear. "Ugh. Fine. One month, and you figure out if its worth it or not!"

Ichiji subsequently wipes the floor with Niji and he's back on fighting toe-to-toe with Reiju, so naturally, Niji is next to knock on Sanji's door. Then Yonji, who despite having little aspirations in defeating his brothers, could not bear to be seen to be falling behind.

"Attack Cuisine, they call it, in certain parts of the world." Judge says, after sampling Sanji's latest dish for himself, feeling the effects already coursing through him. "It's said that the… citizens of a certain kingdom in the New World have 99 recipes that enhance human psyche and physique. It seems you've managed to recreate at least the foundation it was based on." A smile is slow to start on their father's face, but eventually it's there as the man swells in pride. "Our son, through and through." Sora's natural genius and his very own shrewdness speak volumes in Sanji's work.

A few of their spies afar eventually bring another three Attack Cuisine recipes back for Sanji's perusal, and from there, Germa Kingdom gains a new weapon in the form of Sanji's recreation of the entire set and more.

He, of course, ceases to cook any more when the actual royal cooks take over. He has better things to be doing with his time now that he's unravelled another kingdom's secrets and laid it bare for his own kingdom's use.

Devil Fruits, for one.

They're pricey things, but nothing for royalty. In consideration for his lack of enhancements, his father brings him one, one day.

"They're nothing nearly useful as the lineage factor your siblings have." Judge announces, and Sanji knows they're both ticking over the advantages and disadvantages of both the fruit and the factor at the same time. "Still, they are more _versatile_ in some situations. They occasionally grant powers that manipulating DNA can not. Awakened, they may _surpass_ the lineage factor enhancements."

In other words, Sanji reads between the lines, it's a case of hard work versus natural born talent. In the end, they may both reach the same heights, but one needed persistence and the other required little more except that it not be squandered.

Still, Sanji does _not_ eat the fruit so much as put it under observation for the next few months as his new project: to gain the ability of the fruit without the weaknesses to water.

"The foremost expert on Devil Fruits amongst my peers is a man by the name of Caesar Clown." Judge intercedes, when Sanji fails to show any sign of having eaten the fruit. In fact, he's secretly impressed at Sanji's initiative to get only the best out of his situation. A prince of Germa, through and through. Here, Judge pulls a scowl though. "His work and reports are well documented enough, if you can stomach the _ego_ of that man. You'll find copies of his research in my personal library."

But months down the line, it isn't enough and Sanji's so close, and yet he's just missing one thing…

There's no basis for Devil Fruits, not scientifically, at least. They're talking about a 'magical' fruit that imparted an ability on its user while taking away the ability to swim. Firstly, this meant each fruit mutated its host's DNA in some exact manner that allowed them to express the ability. Secondly, it meant that amongst all Devil Fruits, the mutations held one common theme: salt water skin contact would cause the host body to react as if it were a paralytic toxin.

It has to relate to the lineage factor.

"They… can't have Devil Fruits. Can they?" He asks, looking up over a book while his father is scribbling away in his study. These days he finds they share more and more space within the study filled with books on war and science.

Judge peers up and a slow smile spreads. "Ah. You've finally realized it."

"Yeah. You've already _done_ this." Sanji grouses, while keeping his voice light and respectful. Father is still a King and a General, a man who can certainly afford to waste other's times. "The enhancements you gave them are generic zoan abilities. Greater strength, speed, endurance, the exoskeleton… why is a paramecia or logia type unfeasible?" He's not so arrogant to assume Judge hasn't already tried this. He's his father's son, after all, why stop at the weakest of fruits?

"Because the weakness of a Devil Fruit was not permissible." Judge states simply, folding his fingers together. "The human genome is a miraculous thing. When two humans come together to create new life, it is the perfectly random mixing of the parents genes. If the parents are talented, are strong, are naturally all of these things, there is a great chance the children too, will inherit such features. The zoan enhancements are things natural to life, so determining and embedding the code for these things while systematically stripping out the weakness to water into you and your siblings was a simple task. But the inhuman enhancements of the paramecia and logia fruits present a greater challenge. Whatever the science behind natural Devil Fruits, the weakness and the power are so intrinsically intertwined, even I was unable to achieve what you are currently looking to do."

"And so the drugs mother took… they really _were_ seastone capsules." Sanji breathes out, closing his eyes in acceptance. Seastone poisoning meant she did not go peacefully into the night. All this for his sake.

"Amongst other things, but yes. Sora took seastone to attempt to neutralize the lineage factor enhancements."

He doesn't share nearly as many tender moments with his father as his siblings do. For some reason, Judge doted on his warrior children, but treated Sanji more akin to an adult colleague.

"Are you mad at her?" He asks quietly, looking down at his feet and clenching his fists.

Judge regards his third son, the odd duckling out of his children, and shakes his head firmly. "At first, I believed she'd ruined your potential and your future in this kingdom. Sora… for all that she inherited from the scientific branch of our family, she was always so soft-hearted, believing in the best of people. I, on the other hand, hailed from the warrior branch, and swiftly realized the brutality of reality. In the glory years of our marriage, Germa Kingdom was the closest to regaining its former power. We quarrelled over the lineage factor project however, and it all fell apart. And yet, she was still my partner, and her work shows in you. I very nearly failed the kingdom when I thought to discard the science branch in lieu of fully promoting the warrior branch. Sora prevented that error. So no, I am not angry with her. She is the reason why you are here. Our son."

He's not able to sidestep or resist but suddenly he's being swept up in a big hug in his father's arms and Sanji melts into it.

In five years with the support of the entire Germa Kingdom science department, his father, and a captive Caesar Clown, Sanji cracks the code behind Paramecia type Devil Fruits.

In another two years after that, Germa 66 takes the North Blue by storm, a clone army programmed to absolute loyalty wielding the powers of any and all Paramecia devil fruits the Kingdom had gotten its hands on.

In other parts of the world, the sky continues on turning.

The pirate known as the infamous Red-Leg Zeff eventually retired quietly to the East, with both legs intact, his soul heavy from the all too fresh loss of his crew to the Grand Line.

A small crew just setting out sailed from Syrup Village and headed straight towards Cocoyashi, driven on by a navigator tugging on her chains all the way back home, looking to turn them in for the last few million berris she needed for freedom.

A three eyed girl laughed hysterically as she sunk a bullet into her latest suitor her mother has given her to toy with, and the look of horror and disgust sticks artistically to the final face he makes. It suits him, she thinks, as the latest victim to fall to a _monster_.

These facts will never change.

And as things go, they go only way they can go.


End file.
